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So if I were to make the post title into a statement it would be: Rather than a Digital Native/Digital Immigrant dichotomy, students have a wide spectrum of digital competence positively correlating to their digital exposure.

Excellent post, and much needed discussion on digital competencies!

Educational technology advocates claim today's students are technologically savvy content creators and consumers whose mindset differs from previous generations. The digital native-digital immigrant metaphor has been used to make a distinction between those with technology skills and those without. Metaphors such as this one are useful when having initial conversations about an emerging phenomenon, but over time, they become inaccurate and dangerous. Thus, this paper proposes a new metaphor, the digital melting pot, which supports the idea of integrating rather than segregating the natives and the immigrants.

Fantastic presentation on digital natives.

The paper presents and questions the main claims made about digital natives and analyses the nature of the debate itself. We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate 'digital natives' and their implications for education.

Nice start for rubrics for 2.0 projects

Educational Origami is a blog, and a wiki, about the integration of ICT into the classroom, this is one of the largest challenges that I feel we as teachers face. Its about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching. Marc Prensky coined the now popular and famous phrase "Digital natives and digital immigrants" in his two papers on digital Children. We the teachers are the immigrants and our students are the natives, brought up in a world where there has always been computers and the internet, where information is always instant and varied. Our teaching and their learning must reflect this.

Educational Origami is a blog , and a wiki, about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching.

John Pederson pointed me to Danah Boyd's post about the new book "Born Digital" by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Danah describes the book as: "Intended for broad audiences, "Born Digital" creates a conversation between adult concerns, policy approaches, technological capabilities, and youth practice. This is not an ethnography, but JP and Urs build on and connect to ongoing ethnographic research concerning digital youth culture. This is not a parent's guide, but JP and Urs's framework will benefit any parent who wishes to actually understand what's taking place and what the implications are. This is not a policy white paper, but policy makers would be foolish to ignore the book because JP and Urs provide a valuable map for understanding how the policy debates connect to practice and technology. The contribution "Born Digital" makes is in the connections that it makes between youth practices, adult fears, technology, and policy. If you care at all about these issues, this book is a MUST-READ." Danah also goes on to give a great disclaimer to the "academics in the room", those who are very wary and weary of the term "Digital Native". I just ordered this from Amazon - can't wait to share my thoughts on it!

April 21, 2014 Confronting the Myth of the 'Digital Native'"

What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of using technology for learning? Are tech tools essentials, distractions or somewhere in between? How are other teachers using technology? What tech skills do today's teachers need to use digital tools effectively? Here is a collection of Learning Network resources, Times multimedia and articles and useful outside links to help both digital immigrants and digital natives think through these questions.

Executive Summary of Book about teaching the digital native

Kelly Tenkley blog post after #edchat discussion 12/14/10 regarding "digital native" as a myth.

There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn't been the case.

How Generacion C - Connect, Communicate, Change - Born in 1990 and After - Now hitting college - Will Shape the World

Are our ubiquitous interactions with computers radically changing our brains? The way we think? The way we see the world? Do digital natives think significantly differently to digital immigrants?

"...just because somebody knows how to send a text and get an email, doesn't mean they know how to be digital learners" - story about a technology-themed high school in NYC that uses a blended learning, no textbook model

"The currency of youth is time..." I enjoyed the reality that James Gill shares his experience teaching summer schoool. From the tremendous investment of time (and advice from his father, a retired science teacher), to the kids who just tune out and move on. THIS is what teachers who teach summer school deal with. I admire James for his tenacity and positive attitude in the midst of struggle.

Excellent article about summer school and the challenges.

Great article that debunks the whole immigrant/native thing.

"As a technology teacher, I always keep looking for new tools to excite my students. During parent-teacher conferences, when a parent comes and asks me how's their child doing at my subject I almost always say, "Everyone is good at technology" or "All of them love ICT lessons". But when I'm alone, I reflect on these statements many times. If everyone already loves technology and is good at it, then what am I here for? What's my role? This is a generation of digital natives. You show a two-year-old how to scroll through the camera roll of your phone once and they won't ask you again. This makes me question my validity again and again."

"At times, students' viewpoints need to be treated with caution.  In Do Learners Really Know Best? urban legends about learners as 'digital natives' and 'self-educators' are exploded, whilst Kirschner et al. argue, that students do not always prefer the most effective form of instruction.  Despite this, what struck me when reading the Sutton Trust's What Makes Great Teaching was the correlation to student's voice I had done with Year 10 students on their views of effective teaching."